Interpol said Friday it has launched a multinational investigation into what Thailand has dubbed the “Baby Factory” case: a 24-year-old Japanese businessman who has 16 surrogate babies and an alleged desire to father hundreds more.

Police raided a Bangkok condominium earlier this month and found nine babies and nine nannies living in a few unfurnished rooms filled with baby bottles, bouncy chairs, play pens and diapers. They have since identified Mitsutoki Shigeta as the father of those babies – and seven others.

“What I can tell you so far is that I’ve never seen a case like this,” said Thailand’s Interpol director, police Maj. Gen. Apichart Suribunya. “We are trying to understand what kind of person makes this many babies.”

We are trying to understand what kind of person makes this many babies

Apichart said that regional Interpol offices in Japan, Cambodia, Hong Kong and India have been asked to probe Shigeta’s background, beginning last week. Police say he appears to have registered businesses or apartments in those countries and has frequently travelled there.

“We are looking into two motives. One is human trafficking and the other is exploitation of children,” said Thai police Lt. Gen. Kokiat Wongvorachart, Thailand’s lead investigator in the case. He said Shigeta made 41 trips to Thailand since 2010. On many occasions he travelled to nearby Cambodia, where he brought four of his babies.

Shigeta has not been charged with any crime. He is trying to get his children back – the 12 in Thailand are being cared for by social services – and he has proven through DNA samples sent from Japan that he is their biological father. He quickly left Thailand after the Aug. 5 raid on the condominium and has said through a lawyer that he simply wanted a large family and has the means to support it.

Kokiat said Shigeta hired 11 Thai surrogate mothers to carry his children, including four sets of twins. Police have not determined the biological mothers, Kokiat said.

The founder of a multinational fertility clinic that provided Shigeta with two surrogate mothers said she warned Interpol about him even before the first baby was born in June 2013.

“As soon as they got pregnant he requested more. He said he wanted 10 to 15 babies a year, and that he wanted to continue the baby-making process until he’s dead,” said Mariam Kukunashvili, founder of the New Life clinic, which is based in Thailand and six other countries. He also inquired about equipment to freeze his sperm to have sufficient supply when he’s older, she said in a telephone interview from Mexico.

As for Shigeta’s motives, Kukunashvili said he told the clinic’s manager that “he wanted to win elections and could use his big family for voting,” and that “the best thing I can do for the world is to leave many children.” Kukunashvili declined The Associated Press’ request to talk to the clinic manager.

Kukunashvili, who is based at the company’s headquarters in the country of Georgia, said she never met Shigeta but received reports from her Thai staff.

She said that in April 2013, she sent faxes in English and French to Interpol’s head office in Lyon, France, and an email through the agency’s website, but they went unanswered. Apichart of Interpol in Thailand said the local office never saw the warnings. An Interpol spokesman in Lyon did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Kukunashvili also sent Shigeta an email to express suspicion, and attorney Ratpratan Tulatorn responded on his behalf in an Aug. 31, 2013, email that the clinic owner provided to the AP.

Handout / Getty ImagesThai surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua poses with baby Gammy at the Samitivej Hospital on Aug. 6, 2014 in Chonburi province in Bangkok, Thailand. David and Wendy Farnell have made international headlines for abandoning their disabled infant son, Gammy, in Thailand with his surrogate mother, Pattaramon Chanbua. Gammy's twin sister lives with the Farnells at their home in Bunbury, Western Australia. The couple have denied abandoning their son on a recent television interview in Australia.

The attorney said Shigeta was involved in “no dishonesty, no illegal activities.” He said his client hoped to keep using New Life, but the company then stopped working with him.

Shigeta’s activities drew no attention until early this month, when an Australian couple was accused of abandoning a baby with his Thai surrogate mother – but taking his twin sister – after learning the boy had Down syndrome. Though the couple disputes the allegation, the case prompted a crackdown by Thai authorities on what had been a largely unregulated industry.

After the Australian case emerged, police received a tip that prompted the raid on Shigeta’s Bangkok apartment.

Ratpratan, the lawyer, appeared during the raid to insist that Shigeta had done nothing wrong.

“These are legal babies, they all have birth certificates,” Ratpratan told Thailand’s Channel 3 television station. “There are assets purchased under these babies’ names. There are savings accounts for these babies, and investments. If he were to sell these babies, why would he give them these benefits?”

Ratpratan is no longer Shigeta’s lawyer, and his replacement has not responded to requests for comment. Shigeta’s current whereabouts are unknown.

CANBERRA, Australia — Several couples from the United States and Australia have been prevented from leaving Thailand with surrogate babies as part of a government crackdown on the burgeoning commercial surrogacy industry, an Australian broadcaster reported Friday.

Thailand’s military junta, which seized power in May, has indicated it wants to ban commercial surrogacy in the Southeast Asian nation following recent publicity over allegations that an Australian couple had abandoned a baby boy born to a surrogate Thai mother after learning he had Down syndrome. The couple, who took the boy’s healthy twin sister home, has said they wanted to bring the boy with them and the Thai surrogate has acknowledged she kept him because she feared he would end up in a state institution.

On Thursday, two Australian same-sex couples were prevented by Thai officials from leaving the Bangkok airport with babies born to Thai women, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. One couple had attempted to travel with the Thai surrogate mother in the hope of avoiding a challenge at the immigration desk, ABC said.

Two U.S. couples were also prevented from leaving Thailand with babies in similar circumstances since Wednesday, ABC said.

Handout/Channel NineThis video grab from Australia's Channel Nine shows David Farnell, 56, and his wife Wendy (left), holding their daughter in Bunbury, south of Perth in the state of Western Australia. Farnell and his wife, the Australian couple at the centre of a Thai surrogate scandal, on August 10 denied they deliberately abandoned their baby son in Thailand (brother to the one pictured) because he had Down's syndrome and said they would fight to get him back.

In Bangkok, Col. Suwitchphon Imjairatch, a Thai immigration police commander overseeing the city’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, could not confirm those cases. However, he said he was aware of one heterosexual Australian couple that was stopped from leaving Thailand on Thursday with their surrogate baby “because their documents were not sufficient.”

He had no other details.

Thai officials told ABC the couples would have to apply for court orders to take the babies from the country, a process that could take months.

Thai immigration police spokesman Col. Voravat Amornvivat said the Bangkok airport’s immigration departure section had no record of Australian couples with surrogate babies who were barred from leaving Thailand. He said, however, that it might be possible that it was not flagged in the system.

“If it did happen, it could be because the couples could not provide sufficient documents to prove that the babies are theirs,” Voravat said. “Under Thai law, in order to bring an infant out of the country, it has to be proven that the infant is traveling with or accompanied by the parents. And due to the recent surrogacy issue, the authorities are stricter in keeping an eye on those leaving the country.”

Melissa Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, said in an email that the embassy was aware of reports that some parents with children born to surrogates have not been permitted to leave Thailand. Embassy officials were seeking clarification about Thailand’s immigration requirements and talking to Thai government authorities to determine what the ramifications may be for U.S. parents who have already entered into surrogacy agreements in Thailand, she said.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Friday would not confirm the ABC’s report, citing privacy reasons.

“We strongly urge Australians entering Thailand for the purposes of commercial surrogacy to seek independent legal advice in both Thailand and Australia before doing so,” the department said in a statement. “In particular, they should seek advice on the implications of any new exit requirements.”

Scores of surrogates in Thailand are currently pregnant through Australian biological parents.

The Australian couple accused of abandoning their surrogate baby in Thailand have admitted they would have preferred to abort the boy, who has Down’s syndrome, because “no parent wants a son with a disability”.

In their first public comments since it emerged that they had left the boy called Gammy and returned to Australia with his healthy twin sister, David and Wendy Farnell said that they had learnt of his condition too late to terminate and now wanted him back.

“If it would have been safe for the embryo to have been terminated, we probably would have terminated it,” Farnell said.

However, holding back tears, Farnell denied in an interview on Australian television that the couple had abandoned the baby: “I don’t think any parent wants a son with a disability. [But] no, we never abandoned him. No, we never said to the surrogate mother to have an abortion.

“We didn’t give up on him. The surrogate mother wanted to take our girl. And we were scared we were going to lose her. So we had to try and get out of there as fast as we could.”

The separation of six-month-old Gammy from his twin sister, called Pipah, has made headlines around the world and fuelled concerns about the oversight of international commercial surrogacy.

The case took an additional twist when it emerged that Farnell, 56, an electrician, had a history of child sex offences.

Asked whether he was fit to be a father, Farnell, said he “hangs my head in shame” over his crimes but no longer had sexual urges towards children.

“I am not going to harm my little girl,” he said. “She [Pipah] will be 100 per cent safe because I know I will do everything in the world to protect my little girl. I have no inclinations … They have 100 per cent stopped. I don’t have this urge to do anything anymore.”

Farnell was jailed in 1997 for sex offences involving three girls aged five, seven and 10 from the early 1980s to 1993.

He has three children from a previous marriage and is now married to a Chinese woman, Wendy Li, whom he met through an online dating service in 2004. She said she had always known about her husband’s offences but stood by him and did not believe he would ever harm their daughter. “He is a good husband a good father, a very very good son,” she said.

The hour-long interview yesterday appeared only to add to tensions between the couple and Pattharamon Janbua, the 21-year-old surrogate mother, who claims they abandoned Gammy and refused to touch or look at him in hospital.

After learning last night that the Farnells wanted to seek custody of Gammy, Pattharamon, a mother of two, claimed that the egg used in the fertilization process was not supplied by Farnell but belonged to another Thai woman hired by the surrogacy agency.

“They are not really related with the baby … I am not really sure they will give real love to Gammy’s sister,” she told Fairfax Media.

AP Photo/Apichart WeerawongPattaramon Chanbua, 21, with her baby boy Gammy at a hospital in Chonburi province, southeastern Thailand Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014. The Australian government is consulting Thai authorities after news emerged that Gammy, a baby with Downs Syndrome was abandoned with Chanbua, his surrogate mother, in Thailand by his Australian parents, according to local media.

The Farnells have gone into hiding in their home town of Bunbury in Western Australia since it emerged that they left Gammy in Thailand. They eventually agreed to an interview with Nine Network’s Sixty Minutes, which says it has not paid them but will make a donation to a fund to help to care for the boy.

Farnell said the couple fled Thailand with their daughter because they were worried that Pattharamon was planning to keep her.

“We miss our little boy,” he said. “She [Pattharamon] said that if we try to take our little boy, she’s going to get the police and she’s going to come and take our little girl.?.?. and she’s going to keep both of the babies.”

Farnell said he sometimes returned home from work to find that his wife had dressed their daughter in blue because she wanted to remember Gammy.

Farnell said: “We miss him every day. We just want to get our son but we don’t know who can help us.”

Child protection authorities in Australia revealed last week they are reviewing the suitability of the couple to be parents and will consider removing the daughter. Asked about that possibility, Farnell began to cry, spluttering “I hope to God she won’t be” before becoming incoherent.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/no-parent-wants-a-disabled-son-says-australian-father-accused-of-abandoning-child-with-downs-syndrome/feed3stdThis recent handout video grab photo received from Australia's Channel Nine from footage broadcast on August 10, 2014 shows David Farnell, 56, and his wife Wendy (L), holding their daughter in Bunbury, south of Perth in the state of Western Australia.NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty ImagesAP Photo/Apichart WeerawongJapanese businessman allegedly fathered nine babies in two years using Thai surrogateshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/japanese-businessman-allegedly-fathered-nine-babies-in-two-years-using-thai-surrogates
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/japanese-businessman-allegedly-fathered-nine-babies-in-two-years-using-thai-surrogates#commentsFri, 08 Aug 2014 13:01:04 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=501619

BUNBURY, Australia — A Japanese businessman is believed to have fathered nine babies in the past two years using Thai surrogate mothers, amid growing concerns about the international surrogacy industry.

The babies – six boys and three girls – were found at an apartment in Bangkok, where seven nannies had been hired to care for them. The identity of the mother – or mothers – is unknown.

Thai authorities raided the flat after a neighbour reported hearing crying infants. The babies, aged one month to two years, have been taken to a state-run nursing home.

Ratprathan Tulathorn, a Thai lawyer who claims to represent the father, said the Japanese businessman wanted a “big family” and hoped the children would eventually take care of his business.

“The Japanese father loves his babies and comes to visit them every week,” he said.

Thai police were reportedly investigating the possibility that the father was involved in child trafficking.

The Japanese father loves his babies and comes to visit them every week

The raid was publicized as part of the Thai government’s crackdown on paid surrogacy.

Authorities plan to outlaw paid surrogacy for foreigners and had raised the case of Gammy, a Down’s syndrome boy apparently abandoned by his Australian parents.

AP Photo/Apichart WeerawongIn this photo taken Aug. 3, 2014, Thai surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old food vendor, poses with Gammy, a nine-month-old baby boy who was born with a Down syndrome, at a hospital in Sri Racha, Chonburi province, southeastern Thailand. The case of an Australian couple accused of abandoning their baby with his Thai surrogate mother after discovering the child had Down syndrome, and taking home his healthy twin, has cast unfavourable light on the largely unregulated business of commercial surrogacy.

Aek Angsananont, Thailand’s deputy police chief, said authorities were conducting DNA tests and had asked Japanese officials to assist in finding the man. Police know his identity but would not name him.

“If the Japanese man turns out to be the father of the babies, the question is why he wants so many babies,” he said.

Health officials said the seven nannies were paid roughly $130 a month to take care of the surrogate babies. They have been released.

Eight of the babies looked Caucasian and one appeared to be Asian. Five babies were found in rooms on the first floor of the apartment building and four were found on the seventh floor.

In Australia, child protection authorities confirmed Thursday that they had contacted the couple accused of abandoning Gammy, the surrogate baby with Down’s syndrome.

The parents’ suitability was being assessed after it emerged that the father has multiple child sex convictions involving girls as young as five.

The couple, David and Wendy Farnell, have left their home in Bunbury near Perth and made no public statement since it emerged that they returned from Thailand with a healthy baby girl but did not take her twin brother.

However, one of Mr Farnell’s three children from an earlier marriage has defended his father. He said the family remained close despite the 56 year-old electrician’s history of child sex offences.

The son, who refused to be named, said: “He’s made mistakes, we’ve accepted it … he’s made up for them.”

The Daily Telegraph

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/japanese-businessman-allegedly-fathered-nine-babies-in-two-years-using-thai-surrogates/feed4stdA rural woman going by her surname, Kong, six months pregnant acting as a surrogate, at the place she is staying in Wuhan, China.AP Photo/Apichart WeerawongMarni Soupcoff: Surrogate parenting and the value of lifehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/marni-soupcoff-surrogate-parenting-and-the-value-of-life
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/marni-soupcoff-surrogate-parenting-and-the-value-of-life#commentsThu, 07 Aug 2014 10:29:44 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=160222

Kelly McParland, in yesterday’s National Post, lamented the fact that the reproductive process has become nothing more than a “personal, often commercial, transaction.” Commenting on the disturbing case of an Australian couple alleged to have abandoned their ailing Down syndrome infant with his surrogate mother in Thailand while bringing home his healthy twin sister, Mr. McParland wrote: “The Australian couple was simply shopping around for the best deal, as is common. It’s cheaper to hire a surrogate in Thailand than in Australia, so they went there.”

The truth is, it’s actually not expensive to hire a surrogate in Australia; it’s illegal.

That’s an important detail, because it suggests that it’s not the commercialization of surrogacy that led to this sad story, but rather the opposite: the driving of surrogacy underground and abroad by banning the exchange of money for the practice. If paid surrogacy were legal in Australia, both the couple and a local surrogate could have contracted freely and openly under their own country’s laws without relying on dubious international surrogacy agencies or being stuck behind language barriers that exacerbate a difficult and complex arrangement.

No one can ever foresee every eventuality when it comes to surrogacy, because Mr. McParland is right that there is something profoundly special about life – special, crucial and unpredictable. The unusual thing about a surrogacy contract is that it involves more than consenting adults; it contemplates the birth of a child with rights and considerations of his or her own to be taken into account. But should the added intricacies required of such a legal arrangement (which must deal with eventualities such as congenital disorders diagnosed in utero) be enough to jettison all efforts? I don’t think so.

This may be a minority view — like Australia, Canada also bans paid surrogacy — but it seems to me a more coherent one than the status quo, which allows unpaid surrogacy and all the same complexities and unpredictability that entails, while severely handicapping one of the parties from looking after her own interests. If the outrage over the Australian story stems in part from a sense that the economically poor Thai surrogate has been exploited, which it seems to, then it’s hard to see how schemes that outlaw any payment at all, or drive such payments underground where they can’t be effectively enforced or monitored (as in Thailand), are helpful. We might note that while Mr. McParland associates paid surrogacy with a “culture of self-interest” and treating “babies like something plucked from the weekly specials on offer at Costco,” it was in fact a desire to help her own two young children that apparently motivated the Thai surrogate to carry the Australian couple’s babies.

Mr. McParland may rightly praise the surrogate elsewhere in his article for her view that “children are all about love and letting nature take its course.” (The extraordinary woman has been lovingly raising the male twin as though he were her own, and has said she would be happy to take back the female twin if the child is suffering in Australia.) If he is to be consistent, though, Mr. McParland must admit that this admirable woman does not share his compartmentalized view of commerce being incompatible with valuing life.

The surrogate willingly entered into her paid surrogacy arrangement precisely because she viewed providing for her children as the most important thing she could do. And far from leading her to view babies as Costco specials, the surrogacy experience, as bad as it went, only strengthened the surrogate’s respect for the sanctity of young life, as expressed by her unwillingness to abort the male twin when it was discovered he had Down syndrome, and her embracing of his care despite the difficulties.

Is life special? More so than any contract can ever capture. But as an explicit attempt to encapsulate our deepest values and wishes for our children, an imperfect contract can sometimes do greater service to life than none at all.

National Post

Marni Soupcoff is executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, ccf.ca.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/marni-soupcoff-surrogate-parenting-and-the-value-of-life/feed0stdbabygammySurrogacy isn’t always a horror story: How one Canadian couple took the birth of a Down syndrome child in stridehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/surrogacy-isnt-always-a-horror-story-how-one-canadian-couple-took-the-birth-of-a-down-syndrome-child-in-stride
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/surrogacy-isnt-always-a-horror-story-how-one-canadian-couple-took-the-birth-of-a-down-syndrome-child-in-stride#commentsWed, 06 Aug 2014 20:44:39 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=500803

There was a surrogate mother in a developing country, first-world parents, a multiple birth — and one baby who suffered from Down syndrome.

Sound like a recipe for international tragedy? Not quite.

For a gay couple from central Quebec, the birth two years ago was an unequivocal joy, and a stark contrast to the Australian-Thai surrogacy imbroglio that has captured headlines worldwide in recent days.

Unlike that couple, the two Canadian men gladly took home all three triplets born to their surrogate in Mexico. They never demanded an abortion, let alone considered leaving behind Victoria, the Down’s infant, one of the fathers said this week.

“She’s a perfect baby,” he said, asking that their names and hometown not be published to protect the family’s privacy. “She is walking, she is trying to say a few words. … She is a very affectionate baby.”

Their experience underscores the unexpected outcomes surrogacy can produce and how, even in Canada’s largely unregulated fertility-treatment world, efforts are made to ensure parents and “gestational carriers” see eye-to-eye on such matters. Some surrogates and clients agree that they will abort if a serous birth abnormality is diagnosed, others that the baby must be taken to term “no matter what,” say fertility lawyers and consultants.

The issues, insiders say, are typically addressed in contracts that can actually impose financial penalties on surrogates who refuse the intended parents’ request to abort. The goal is to avoid the kind of nasty dispute that saw an Australian couple take home one twin and leave her Down syndrome brother in the hands of their Thai surrogate, after the woman refused to end her pregnancy.

Still, making the decision to terminate, even when there is agreement and it appears the baby would be terribly impaired, is never easy, said Michelle Flowerday, a Toronto-based fertility lawyer.

“It’s an absolutely devastating situation — it’s devastating for the intended parents, it’s devastating for the surrogates,” said Ms. Flowerday. “It’s gut-wrenching for everybody involved, because these parties are very, very motivated to make a family.”

In one of her recent cases, the carrier aborted after tests showed the fetus was suffering from encephalitis, brain inflammation that would leave the child severely disabled. Sometimes termination occurs as late as 38 weeks.

Others choose to push ahead regardless. One case arranged by Sally Rhoads-Heinrich, a surrogacy consultant who worked with the Quebec couple, involved an Australian father and a baby born with dire health problems to a Canadian surrogate. The man stayed at the child’s bedside for a month before the newborn passed away, said the owner of Surrogacy in Canada Online.

In a sense, surrogacy puts a modern twist on the broader issues around abortion and screening for congenital abnormalities, the choices confronting two parties with deep — but very distinct — interests in the pregnancy.

Despite attempts to circumvent emotional disputes, trouble can arise even in Canada. About five years ago, a surrogate in B.C. clashed with intended parents who wanted her to abort a baby diagnosed with Down’s. They said they would not support the child if born, and she eventually did terminate, feeling unable to raise the baby as well as her own children, a Vancouver-area doctor revealed in 2010.

HandoutThree triplets born two years ago to a Mexican surrogate for a central Quebec couple, from left to right Jean-Gabriel, Victoria and Matheo.

The world has been captivated more recently by the story of Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old Thai food vendor bringing up baby boy Gammy, born with Down’s in December; his sister went to Western Australia with the twins’ biological parents. Complicating the situation are reports that the father is a convicted child sex offender.

The parents’ actions have left everyone in the surrogacy world disheartened, said Ms. Rhoads-Heinrich. Meanwhile, she said her phone has been ringing off the hook with Australian would-be parents looking for a “safer” place than Thailand to arrange a surrogacy, she said. The process is banned in Australia itself.

In Canada, negotiating how to deal with pregnancy crises like possible serious disability is a “very important” part of bringing together surrogate mothers and intended parents, said Sara Cohen, a fertility lawyer.

Sometimes, “what we are looking for … in a gestational carrier is one who is going to understand that this is not her child, so it’s not her decision to make,” she said. “Is it her body? Yes, it’s her body, but it’s not her decision to make.”

Some contracts stipulate that if a surrogate chooses to continue a pregnancy against the parents’ wishes, she could loose the remainder of her expense payments, or even have to cover the costs of the fertility treatment, said Ms. Flowerday.

Or the opposite could be the case.

“I’ve worked with many intended parents who will work with a gestational carrier who says ‘I will not abort, no matter what,’ ” said Ms. Cohen. “And that’s in the contract … ‘[The surrogate] has no responsibilities, regardless of the health of this child.’ ”

But what if there is still a dispute over who should care for a child, like the one in Thailand or in B.C. a few years ago? A surrogate in Canada could actually apply for child support or even to transfer custody of a baby to reluctant parents, said Ms. Flowerday. The issue has never been tested in the courts here, however, so where the law would come down remains a large question mark, she said.

The Quebec couple’s surrogate in Mexico underwent in-vitro fertilization with an embryo made using one of the men’s sperm and a donated egg. They discussed in advance what would happen if an issue like Down’s were discovered, and agreed she would continue with the pregnancy, though the odds of the genetic abnormality are as little as one in 1,500.

“It’s not often, but it happens,” said the father, a dentist. “You have to be ready for that.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/surrogacy-isnt-always-a-horror-story-how-one-canadian-couple-took-the-birth-of-a-down-syndrome-child-in-stride/feed6stdBabies2[2].jpgHandoutKelly McParland: Australian couple in Thai surrogacy case are only conducting the baby business as usualhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-australian-couple-in-thai-surrogacy-case-are-only-conducting-the-baby-business-as-usual
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-australian-couple-in-thai-surrogacy-case-are-only-conducting-the-baby-business-as-usual#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 14:39:53 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=160083

Commenting on the case of an Australian couple who allegedly took home the healthy half of a pair of twins born to a surrogate mother in Thailand, but left the “damaged” twin behind, a fertility lawyer in Toronto noted: “It’s the nasty side of surrogacy…The Australian couple made a choice and anybody can make that choice.”

Which is exactly the case, and makes one wonder why anyone is outraged at the situation. The world long ago gave up any pretense of pretending the reproduction process is anything more than a personal, often commercial, transaction. It’s all about the parents – or maybe just one parent – making a “choice.” It’s not like life is special or anything.

The Australian couple was simply shopping around for the best deal, as is common. It’s cheaper to hire a surrogate in Thailand than in Australia, so they went there. When the twins arrived and one was discovered to have Down syndrome, they allegedly took the one they wanted (a healthy girl) and dumped the other (a boy) on the surrogate. The surrogate says they also stiffed her on the full fee for her services, presumably feeling they didn’t get full value. And what’s wrong with that? When you treat babies like something plucked from the weekly specials on offer at Costco, you expect to return anything you don’t want, no questions asked.

Canada is no different. A woman who was recently turned away from a Calgary fertility clinic, because it wouldn’t let her pick the ethnicity of her child, was shocked at the treatment.

“I’m not sure that we should be creating rainbow families just because some single woman decides that that’s what she wants,” she was told. “That’s her prerogative, but that’s not her prerogative in our clinic.”

The clinic, not the woman, took the heat for the incident. In Canada, as elsewhere, public opinion comes down on the side of those who want to exercise as much control as possible over the sex, colour or ethnicity of the children they raise. To oppose that view is seen as sexist, racist, and/or a violation of individual rights. The clinic had to backtrack, noting it had dropped the policy last year. The Alberta Health Minister was surprised: “I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s in keeping with the values of Alberta or society generally.”

The culture of self-interest is so firmly planted that it’s hard to imagine change would be possible.

Precisely. Canada is the only developed country that refuses to put any limits on abortion, for any reason. That includes the desire to abort babies on a “sex-selection” basis, getting rid of the girls (as is usually the case) and keeping the boys. Canadians say they oppose this, but they don’t want to introduce any laws against it, because it might create a fuss. They don’t want to be seen as “anti-Choice” or as recruits in the “war against women.” And it’s not like life is special or anything.

The culture of self-interest is so firmly planted that it’s hard to imagine change would be possible. It’s not even clear the majority of the population would support change. We seem to enjoy being outraged at incidents like the one involving the Australian couple, while simultaneously expressing our firm determination to do nothing about it. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described it as “a tragic human situation,” and “terribly, terribly unfortunate,” but no one suggested it was illegal. If the couple wanted to try again for a healthy boy, they could head straight back to another country with liberal laws about baby-making (unless later reports that the father is also a pedophile prove accurate). Maybe they’d want to try India this time, and wangle an even better deal. And if the Thai surrogate wants to reclaim the girl, Australian lawyers say she can take the couple to court.

Related

She’s not sure she wants to right now. She says she loves the Down syndrome baby, and wouldn’t give it up under any circumstances. She’d like to have its twin back as well, “because it was in my womb”, but is willing to let fate takes its course.

“If she is happy, then I, as a mother, am also happy. I don’t want to bring her back to suffer or anything. A mother would never want her child in trouble,” she said. “But if she really cannot go on living there, then I’m very happy to have her back in my arms.”

She seems to be out of step with current thinking if she thinks children are all about love and letting nature take its course. It’s almost like she thinks children are special. No wonder it’s cheaper to get a surrogate in Thailand than in Australia. They just don’t understand commerce there.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-australian-couple-in-thai-surrogacy-case-are-only-conducting-the-baby-business-as-usual/feed0stdsurrogate.jpgAP Photo/Rob Griffith)Father in Aussie couple who left son with Down Sydrome with Thai surrogate is a convicted pedophile, police sayhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/father-in-aussie-couple-who-left-son-with-down-sydrome-with-thai-surrogate-is-a-convicted-pedophile-police-say
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/father-in-aussie-couple-who-left-son-with-down-sydrome-with-thai-surrogate-is-a-convicted-pedophile-police-say#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 12:43:42 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=500030

SRI RACHA, Thailand — A Thai surrogate mother raising a Down syndrome baby she claims was abandoned by his Australian biological parents said Tuesday she would be happy to have the boy’s healthy twin returned to her, especially after learning the father is a convicted sex offender.

The Australian government is considering policy changes due to the case, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott described it as “a tragic human situation.”

Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old food vendor with two young children of her own, has been bringing up baby boy Gammy since he was born in December.

She claimed the parents rejected Gammy while taking his healthy twin sister home to Western Australia state. The Australian parents have not spoken publicly, though third parties disputed assertions that they heartlessly abandoned the afflicted baby.

Australia’s Nine Network television reported Tuesday that the father was a convicted pedophile. A police officer told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the media, that the father was a convicted sex offender.

“Personally, when I heard the news I was shocked but I can’t say anything much right now,” Pattaramon said at a press conference in her hometown, adding that she would “leave it to the law” to see if she can get the girl back.

AFP PHOTO / PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKULPORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty ImagesThai surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua (C) gives a traditional greeting to the media during a press conference at the Samitivej hospital in Sriracha district, Chonburi province on August 5, 2014. The Thai surrogate mother of a baby born with Down Syndrome vowed on August 4 to "never abandon" him after the Australian parents reportedly refused to care for the child, sparking a moral debate and a cascade of donations for the boy's medical care.

Professor Jenni Millbank, a surrogacy law expert at Sydney’s University of Technology, said Pattaramon could seek custody of the daughter through the Australian courts.

“She’s a legal parent. If she turned up in the Family Court tomorrow, she could seek the return of that child, if that’s what she wanted,” Millbank told Nine Network television.

Surrogacy involves a woman carrying an implanted embryo in order to give birth, often because health issues prevent the biological mother from doing so. Legal doctrine on surrogacy is inconsistent, especially when different nationalities are involved. Countries such as India, Ukraine and Thailand have fairly lenient regulations and are popular for parents in developed countries looking for lower-cost surrogate mothers.

Pattaramon expressed sentimental attachment to the girl now in Australia, saying: “I want her back because she is my baby. She was in my womb.” However, she said she was inclined to leave the resolution of the issue up to “fate.”

“If she is happy, then I, as a mother, am also happy. I don’t want to bring her back to suffer or anything. A mother would never want her child in trouble,” she said. “But if she really cannot go on living there, then I’m very happy to have her back in my arms.”

She said she will never hand over to the Australian couple 7-month-old Gammy, who has a congenital heart condition as well as Down syndrome: “Never. Not in any way.”

The case had already caused a stir because of the allegation that the Australian couple did not take home both children.
Pattaramon has also said she did not receive the full payment she was promised through a broker for serving as a surrogate mother. The agency has declined requests for an interview from The Associated Press.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Tuesday her department was working to consider what policy response the Australian government should make.

“This tragic situation has arisen as a result of a commercial surrogacy arrangement,” Bishop told reporters. “We’re looking at it from every angle.”

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott said “there are no easy answers when it comes to government.”

“For me, the one shining light to come from this most unfortunate, deeply regrettable situation is there appears to have
been an absolute outpouring of generosity toward baby Gammy and his mother.”

The Australian charity Hands Across the Water has raised more than $215,000 since July 22 to help the baby.

“That’s the one thing I would like to say redeems this otherwise terribly, terribly unfortunate situation,” Abbott said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/father-in-aussie-couple-who-left-son-with-down-sydrome-with-thai-surrogate-is-a-convicted-pedophile-police-say/feed1stdThai surrogate mother Pattaramon Chanbua (L) holds her baby Gammy, born with Down Syndrome, at the Samitivej hospital, Sriracha district in Chonburi province on August 4, 2014. The surrogate mother of a baby reportedly abandoned by his Australian parents in Thailand because he has Down Syndrome was a "saint" and "absolute hero", Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said.AFP PHOTO / PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKULPORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty ImagesAP Photo/Apichart WeerawongBaby abandoned to surrogate mother could happen in Canada: expertshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/baby-abandoned-to-surrogate-mother-could-happen-in-canada-experts
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/baby-abandoned-to-surrogate-mother-could-happen-in-canada-experts#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 00:23:48 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=499976

The case of an Australian couple that abandoned a Down syndrome baby with his Thai surrogate mother has prompted outrage around the world, but there’s nothing to prevent the scenario from being repeated by a Canadian couple, experts say.

The biological parents of Gammy, who has Down syndrome and a congenital heart condition, left him behind in Thailand but took his healthy twin sister back to Australia with them. His 21-year-old Thai surrogate is now caring for the seven-month-old baby.

“It’s the nasty side of surrogacy,” said Sherry Levitan, a fertility lawyer based in Toronto. “The Australian couple made a choice and anybody can make that choice.”

Ms. Levitan said some Canadian couples choose to go abroad for a surrogate to save money.

In Canada, total cost for surrogacy, including medical fees, lawyer fees and expenses related to the pregnancy incurred by the surrogate can amount to $60,000, she said.

In the Thai case, the surrogate was promised 300,000 baht ($9,300) by a surrogacy agency. Other costs for the Australian couple are not known.

“Could Canadians choose to do this?…. Could they choose to abandon their baby? They could, and that would be awful,” said Sara Cohen, a fertility lawyer with Fertility Law Canada based in Toronto.

However, Ms. Cohen said the situation is less likely to happen to a Canadian couple because Canadians are less likely to go abroad for surrogacy because of the options at home.

“It affects Australians so much more than it affects Canadians because Australia does not have a culture of surrogacy that we have in Canada,” she said.

In Canada, commercial surrogacy is prohibited but we have an “excellent culture” of altruistic surrogacy, Ms. Cohen said.

“People go overseas and engage in those arrangements. We obviously we don’t regulate those,” said a spokeswoman for Health Canada. “And then it becomes a citizenship and immigration issue to bring back the baby.”

In the Thai-Australian case, the Australian government now says it may intervene and the boy might be entitled to Australian citizenship.

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the law surrounding the case “is very, very murky,” but called Pattaramon Chanbua, the surrogate, “an absolute hero.”

Pattaramon, a food vendor who lives in the Thai seaside town of Sri Racha, said she was not angry with the biological parents for leaving Gammy behind. She said she hoped they would take good care of his twin sister.

“I’ve never felt angry at them or hated them. I’m always willing to forgive them,” Pattaramon told The Associated Press.

She said the agency knew about Gammy’s condition four or five months after she became pregnant but did not tell her. It wasn’t until the seventh month of her pregnancy that the doctors and the agency told her the twin boy had Down syndrome and suggested that she abort the fetus.

Pattaramon recalled strongly rejecting the idea, believing that having an abortion would be sinful.

“I asked them, ’Are you still humans?’ I really wanted to know,” she said.

An online campaign by the Australian charity organization Hands Across the Water to help Gammy has raised more than $215,000 since July 22.

‘Could Canadians choose to do this?…. Could they choose to abandon their baby? They could, and that would be awful’

Gammy was moved from a public to a private hospital on Saturday and is being treated for a lung infection. Heart surgery has not yet been scheduled.

The Australian broadcaster, ABC, reported that Gammy’s biological father has denied intentionally abandoning his son in Thailand, saying he did not know that his daughter had a twin.

Pattaramon’s case highlights the rising problem of surrogacy in Thailand, where legal loopholes allow the practice to exist. Thai officials said last week that there were 50 surrogate babies of Israeli couples in Thailand who were not able to travel to Israel due to nationality issues.

“The Thai authorities are pushing for a law that will ban surrogacy of non-family members, but there is no punishment right now,” said Pavena Hongsakul, a former Thai social development and human security minister and advocate for women’s and children’s rights.

It is illegal to pay a surrogate mother in Australia, and in some states, excluding Western Australia where Gammy’s biological parents live, it is also illegal to pay a surrogate living overseas. An Australian woman can act as a surrogate for free, but also has a right to keep the child rather than hand it over to the biological parents.

Pattaramon, who has a 6-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, has had to take a break from her job to care for little Gammy. She says she approached the Thai surrogacy agency because she needed money to care for her children and pay off debts.

National Post with files from the Associated Press

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/baby-abandoned-to-surrogate-mother-could-happen-in-canada-experts/feed4stdbaby-1NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty ImagesBaby Gammy, whose parents left him with Thai surrogate mom, may still be eligible for Australian citizenshiphttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/baby-gammy-whose-parents-left-him-with-thai-surrogate-mom-may-still-be-eligible-for-australian-citizenship
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/baby-gammy-whose-parents-left-him-with-thai-surrogate-mom-may-still-be-eligible-for-australian-citizenship#commentsMon, 04 Aug 2014 18:24:19 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=499777

Australia’s government is considering intervening in the case of a baby with Down syndrome who was left with a Thai surrogate mother by his Australian biological parents, with a minister saying Monday that the child might be entitled to Australian citizenship.

Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old food vendor in Thailand’s seaside town of Sri Racha, is taking care of her 7-month-old surrogate baby, named Gammy, who also has a congenital heart condition. The parents, who have not been identified in the media, took Gammy’s healthy twin sister back to their home in Western Australia state.

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told Sydney Radio 2GB on Monday that Pattaramon “is an absolute hero” and “a saint,” adding that the law surrounding the case “is very, very murky.”

“We are taking a close look at what can be done here, but I wouldn’t want to raise any false hopes or expectations,” Morrison said. “We are dealing with something that has happened in another country’s jurisdiction.”

Morrison’s office later said in a statement that “the child may be eligible for Australian citizenship,” without elaborating.

Australian citizens are entitled to free health care in Australia.

In Sri Racha on Sunday, Pattaramon said that she was not angry with the biological parents for leaving Gammy behind, and that she hoped they would take care of the boy’s twin sister they took with them.

“I’ve never felt angry at them or hated them. I’m always willing to forgive them,” Pattaramon told The Associated Press. “I want to see that they love the baby girl as much as my family loves Gammy. I want her to be well taken care of.”

Pattaramon was promised 300,000 baht ($9,300) by a surrogacy agency in Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, to be a surrogate for the Australian couple, but she has not been fully paid since the children were born last December.

She said the agency knew about Gammy’s condition four to five months after she became pregnant but did not tell her. It wasn’t until the seventh month of her pregnancy when the doctors and the agency told her that one of the twin babies had Down syndrome and suggested that she have an abortion just for him.

Pattaramon recalled strongly rejecting the idea, believing that having the abortion would be sinful. “I asked them, ’Are you still humans?’ I really wanted to know,” she said.

An online campaign by the Australian charity organization Hands Across the Water to help Gammy has raised more than $215,000 since July 22.

Mora Kelly, founder of the Children First Foundation, which brings sick children from developing countries to Australia for medical treatment, said she had discussed with Hands Across the Water bringing Gammy to the Australian city of Melbourne for heart surgery.

“I believe that this child should be able to access our health care system here in Australia,” Kelly told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “This child, in essence … should be an Australian citizen.”

But Hands Across the Water founder and chairman Peter Baines said Pattaramon and her family’s wishes would need to be considered in any decision to fly Gammy to Australia.

“Certainly our position is that there is no need to bring Gammy out to Australia,” Baines said. “There’s a high level of medical care available in Thailand and there’s nothing to my knowledge that indicates he’s suffering from something that can’t be treated in Thailand.”

Gammy was moved from a public to a private hospital on Saturday. Heart surgery has not been scheduled yet, Baines said.

ABC reported that Gammy’s biological father denied intentionally abandoning his son in Thailand, and that he had not known that his new daughter had a twin.

It is illegal to pay a surrogate mother in Australia and in some states, excluding Western Australia, it is also illegal to pay a surrogate living overseas. An Australian woman can act as a surrogate for free, but also has a right to keep the child rather than hand it over to the biological parents.

A Thai surrogate mother said Sunday that she was not angry with the Australian biological parents who left behind a baby boy born with Down syndrome, and hoped that the family would take care of the boy’s twin sister they took with them.

Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old food vendor in Thailand’s seaside town of Sri Racha, has had to take a break from her job to take care of her 7-month-old surrogate baby, named “Gammy,” who also has a congenital heart condition. The boy, with blond hair and dark brown eyes, is now being treated in a hospital for infection in his lungs.

Pattaramon said she met the Australian couple once when the babies were born and knew only that they lived in Western Australia state.

I want to see that they love the baby girl as much as my family loves Gammy

“I’ve never felt angry at them or hated them. I’m always willing to forgive them,” Pattaramon told The Associated Press. “I want to see that they love the baby girl as much as my family loves Gammy. I want her to be well taken care of.”

Pattaramon was promised 300,000 baht ($9,300) by a surrogacy agency in Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, to be a surrogate for the Australian couple, but she has not been fully paid since the children were born last December.

She said the agency knew about Gammy’s condition four to five months after she became pregnant but did not tell her. It wasn’t until the seventh month of her pregnancy when the doctors and the agency told her that one of the twin babies had Down syndrome and suggested that she have an abortion just for him.

Pattaramon recalled strongly rejecting the idea, believing that having the abortion would be sinful. “I asked them, `Are you still humans?’ I really wanted to know,” she said Sunday.

Pattaramon’s case highlights the rising problem of surrogacy in Thailand, where legal loopholes allow the practice to exist. Thai officials said last week that there were 50 surrogate babies of Israeli couples in Thailand who were not able to travel to Israel due to nationality issues.

“The Thai authorities are pushing for a law that will ban surrogacy of non-family members, but there is no punishment right now,” said Pavena Hongsakul, a former Thai social development and human security minister and advocate for women’s and children’s rights. “This is a worrying trend as it can lead to other problems, such as human trafficking.”

Pavena said a surrogate mother is usually paid 300,000 to 350,000 baht ($9,300 to $10,900) to carry a baby for overseas couples who either have reproduction difficulties or are gay.

Pattaramon, who also has a 6-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, said she approached the surrogacy agency on Facebook early last year because she wanted money to pay off debts. She said she plans to file a complaint with Thai police to get the rest of the unpaid compensation money from the agency.

Meanwhile, an online campaign by an Australian charity organization to help Gammy has raised nearly $200,000 since July 22.

“I’m going to save the money for him,” Pattaramon said. “Actually, I just want the baby to have a house. It doesn’t have to be big. I only want him to live in a good house and be comfortable.”

Radio host Joël Legendre exuberantly announced the pending birth of twin girls last week, sounding like any expectant father. “I am excited right now,” he wrote to his Facebook fans. “I have a secret to tell you.”

But because Mr. Legendre is gay, the conception of the twins due in July was anything but straightforward. It is thanks to “exceptional technological advances” and the “extraordinary woman who decided to welcome two tiny embryos inside her” that he and his partner can fulfill their dream of parenthood, he wrote.

His subsequent boast that he had persuaded Quebec’s health insurance board to cover the roughly $5,000 cost of the medical procedure — in a province where the law discourages surrogate motherhood — has transformed his joyous announcement into a controversy over whether Quebec’s publicly funded IVF program has gone too far.

Université de Montréal law professor Alain Roy, a family law expert, said Quebec’s health insurance board was “completely premature” in agreeing to cover the procedure for Mr. Legendre and his partner of four years, Junior Bombardier.

That is because the province’s Civil Code explicitly discourages surrogacy, stating “any agreement whereby a woman undertakes to procreate or carry a child for another person is absolutely null.” The law means a surrogate remains the legal mother of a child she carries, but some judges have interpreted it liberally to allow a non-biological parent to legally adopt a child born of a surrogate.

Related

New Liberal Health Minister Gaétan Barrette said Quebec’s IVF program needs clearer parameters, and he is awaiting a report due next month before acting. In his previous role as head of the federation of medical specialists, Dr. Barrette criticized the program as “an open bar.” Demand has been far greater than expected, and the $60-million annual cost is twice what was forecast when Quebec became the first province to fully fund IVF in 2010.

Mr. Roy said the article of the Civil Code dealing with surrogacy, introduced in 1994, is there because of ethical concerns, and it is not the health insurance board’s role to rewrite policy.

Mr. Legendre told listeners of his radio show that he considered it discriminatory that a lesbian couple could have IVF treatment covered by the province while two gay men could not. But Mr. Roy, chairman of a provincial committee mandated to propose changes to Quebec family law, said the two situations are not comparable.

“I don’t think we can compare a surrogate mother to a sperm donor,” he said. “The third party who is a sperm donor, his contribution is 10 seconds. The surrogate mother’s contribution is nine months and it raises fundamental ethical questions about the exploitation of women’s bodies, about possible commodification of children, about the right of a child to know his origins.”

He said these questions warrant serious public debate, and should not be decided by bureaucrats interpreting health-insurance regulations. “Technically it may be discrimination, but when you look in depth, you say, wait, maybe there is a reason for this discrimination,” he said.

I don’t think we can compare a surrogate mother to a sperm donor

Mr. Legendre appeared Sunday on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle, where he was applauded as he discussed the pending birth of his twins. He said he had initially sought to adopt, but it has become very hard for gay couples to adopt internationally.

A friend of Mr. Bombardier offered to be a surrogate mother, with eggs purchased from a U.S. company. (Canadian law prohibits the sale of human eggs.) “Once we have made our payment, they send us a virtual catalogue, and there are about 200 mothers in it with pedigrees, personal stories, why they want to give eggs,” he explained. “We were uncomfortable, as if we were choosing our child like you would choose a car.”

They made their selection, and the frozen eggs were shipped to Montreal, where the fertilization was performed in a private clinic. After the twins are born, the couple and the surrogate mother will go before a judge to formalize an adoption, declaring the two men co-fathers.

Mr. Legendre said he believes gay men have a right to be parents. “Being gay is not a choice,” he said on Tout le monde en parle. “You do not choose not to be a parent. My feeling is that everyone has the right.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/health/gay-radio-hosts-child-born-through-surrogate-mother-spurs-debate-over-in-vitro-fertilization-in-quebec/feed0stdCNW Group/Loto-QuÈbecUtah woman, 58, set to give birth to her own grandchild after becoming surrogate for daughterhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/utah-woman-58-set-to-give-birth-to-her-own-grandchild-after-becoming-surrogate-for-daughter
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/utah-woman-58-set-to-give-birth-to-her-own-grandchild-after-becoming-surrogate-for-daughter#commentsWed, 08 Jan 2014 20:16:12 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=411779

PROVO, Utah — A 58-year-old Utah woman is set to give birth in a few weeks — to her granddaughter.

Julia Navarro is serving as a gestational surrogate for her daughter and son-in-law.

Lorena McKinnon says after struggling with fertility issues, she and her husband tried to find a surrogate.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/utah-woman-58-set-to-give-birth-to-her-own-grandchild-after-becoming-surrogate-for-daughter/feed2stdLorena McKinnon, right, feels her mother Julia Navarro's womb for movement of McKinnon's daughter that will be born in about a month. McKinnon has never been able to bring a baby to term so McKinnon's 58-year-old mother, Navarro, is having the baby for herAP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Al HartmannAP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Al HartmannBarbara Kay: Second thoughts on surrogacyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-second-thoughts-on-surrogacy
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-second-thoughts-on-surrogacy#commentsFri, 01 Nov 2013 04:01:57 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=134431

An unidentified British couple will be travelling to Mumbai, India next March to pick up some valuable merchandise they ordered a while ago: their four biological newborn babies.

The 30-something couple, beset with fertility issues, decided on gestational surrogacy as their best bet for biological children and, hedging that bet, went with triple embryos in two surrogate wombs, resulting in double twin pregnancies (reportedly delighted, they declined offers to reduce the number).

Their case has raised concerns among medical professionals in Britain, where the rules are stricter — they would not have been allowed two surrogates in the same cycle. But it is not an uncommon situation in India, where surrogacy is now a billion-dollar industry.

I must confess that while I hold unconflicted opinions on some reproductive issues — I oppose the creation of purposely fatherless sperm-donor children, for example — I feel ambivalent about gestational surrogacy when the parents would otherwise remain childless, and the surrogate carries the biological issue of both parents.

I know one such couple very well. They are in fact typical of the demographic that goes in for surrogacy: educated, high-achieving, mature, domestically stable, financially secure, yearning to parent. I was saddened by their anguish in enduring one failed pregnancy after another. And how could I fail to rejoice with them when a surrogate produced two beautiful, healthy twin girls, 100% theirs biologically?

The outcome seemed to be a win-win. The well-paid surrogate mother wasn’t emotionally invested. The babies have been welcomed into a nurturing, comfortable home in which unbounded love and every desirable social and material advantage is lavished upon them.

So what explains my ambivalence?

One factor is that relatively few surrogacies are altruistically inspired. And as a good Canadian, I am uneasy about reproductive happiness being restricted to the 1% who can afford to pay the price that surrogate mothers typically demand. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to remedy this inequality by endorsing surrogacy as a reproductive “right” that Medicare should fund, especially considering that three-quarters of surrogacies fail.

Surrogates run a daunting medical gauntlet most people never hear of, requiring months of preparation involving massive synthetic hormone loads that can wreak havoc on the body

In a recent essay in the Weekly Standard magazine, entitled “Womb for Rent,” Charlotte Allen notes that gay marriage likely will soon be universally legal in the United States, as of course it already is in Canada. This creates a new infertility category — “social infertility” — consisting mainly of single heterosexual men and gay couples (quips about “gaybies” and “surrogaycy” abound on websites). One California surrogacy agency reports that gay couples constitute a third of its clientele. One can therefore see the logical basis for gays demanding surrogacy as a “right.”

But pregnancy is never risk-free, and surrogates run a daunting medical gauntlet most people never hear of, requiring months of preparation involving massive synthetic hormone loads that can wreak havoc on the body (often repeated after failure). Plus, there is a good chance of carrying twins, which involves its own special conditions and discomforts, as well as a higher risk of pre-eclampsia and premature birth.

Surrogacy in India, where some 25,000 foreign couples shop annually (gays are barred), can be procured for as little as $5,000, a fortune to penurious Indian women who are sometimes pushed into surrogacy by their husbands. Scandalous clinic conditions have been exposed. Indian surrogates often are not paid if they miscarry; they can be forced to have unnecessary, but more rapid C-sections; and there have even been reported surrogate deaths traceable to indifferent care for the surrogate.

What with celebrities such as Elton John, Robert De Niro, Nicole Kidman and Sarah Jessica Parker bruiting their happiness achieved through surrogacy, and our culture’s growing solicitude for gay entitlements, surrogacy is bound to win widespread social acceptance.

And yet I remain uneasy. Perhaps it has something to do with a statement issued by the British couple, when queried as to whether they would meet with their surrogates: “She’s doing a job for us. How often do you communicate with your builder or gardener? She’ll get paid … We don’t need to see her.”

A 54-year-old Canadian woman recently returned home with a baby birthed for a fee by an Indian surrogate arranged through a controversial doctor who is building the world’s first ‘‘baby factory,’’ according to a new BBC documentary.

The Canadian, identified as ‘‘Barbara,’’ paid a woman in Gujarat, India, identified as Edan, to be a surrogate of her son, according to the documentary, which ran Tuesday on BBC4.

The film, House of Surrogates, tells the story of Dr. Nayna Patel, who is building a clinic to house hundreds of poverty-stricken Indian women making babies for childless Westerners.

The one-stop surrogacy shop — complete with a gift shop and hotel rooms — is under construction as part of India’s multi-billion-dollar commercial surrogacy industry.

Dr. Patel already runs the Akanksha clinic, which currently accommodates around 100 pregnant women in a single house.

The film shows Barbara forced to stay in India for four months with her newborn son, Ceron, before she got the paperwork she needed to take him home. She paid Edan to give birth to her baby, and also gave her cash to visit her hotel twice a day to continue breast feeding her new son before she returned to Canada.

“Infertility is a medical problem,’’ said Barbara, who tried for 30 years to become a mother.

“If people born with bad eyesight get corrective eye glasses, and diabetics get insulin, why can’t we get medical treatment for our problem?”

According to the documentary, hopeful parents send sperm or embryos to the clinic via courier, often only visiting India to pick up their new son or daughter.

Special Edition Films/SWNS.comDr. Nayna Patel (at right in pink sari) with some of the approximately 100 surrogate mothers that live at Surrogate House in Gujarat, India.

“According to many, I am controversial. There have been allegations of baby selling, baby making factory,” said Dr. Patel.

“The surrogates are doing the physical work agreed and they are being compensated for it.”

Currently under construction, her new clinic will have apartments for the visiting Western couples, a floor for the surrogate mothers to live, offices, delivery rooms, an IVF department and even a collection of restaurants and a gift shop.

Dr. Patel’s program has already produced almost 600 babies in a decade. She has received death threats and faced accusations of exploiting the poor for profit, but she insists her work is a “feminist mission” bringing equally needy woman together.

Speaking in Tuesday’s documentary, she said: “These women know there is no gain without pain. I definitely see myself as a feminist. Surrogacy is one woman helping another.”

Among the hopeful couples is British doctor Michael, 62, and his Russian wife Veronica, 33. She was born with one fallopian tube and one ovary, leaving her unable to carry a child. A surrogate has been implanted with two embryos.

“My last chance of trying to have my own child is to use a surrogate,’’ Veronica said.

“The embryos for me are already alive, they are waiting for that moment where they can grow and be taken out and say ‘Hello mommy’… it’s like my whole future starts today, right now.”

‘According to many, I am controversial. There have been allegations of baby selling, baby making factory’

Husband Michael said the clinic looks ordinary from the outside, but it is professional and sterile, and no different from what he was used to in the West.

The documentary shows Dr. Patel praying as she places the embryos inside the uterus of a surrogate. In two weeks a blood test will reveal if she is pregnant.

Surrogate mum-to-be Papiya is expecting twins for an American couple and plans to spend the cash on a house for her family.

“Having twins means we get a bigger fee,” she said. “Last time I was a surrogate I bought white goods, a car and lent some to my sister in law. This time I will buy a house.”

Mother Vasanti and her husband Ashok have been able to send daughter Mansi to an esteemed English-speaking school thanks to the cash she has earned from surrogacy.

They currently all live in one room — shared with four more family members — but are building a new house with surrogacy fees.

Vasanti told the film makers: “Things are getting more expensive we can’t afford them.”

The fertility consultant facing an unprecedented criminal prosecution over her work arranging surrogacy services is accused of providing false profiles of egg donors and surrogates to potential clients, documents filed by the RCMP indicate.

The allegations are contained in details of the four Criminal Code forgery counts that Leia Picard and her company, with offices in Ontario and B.C., both face, among 27 charges laid in February.

Police had earlier declined to outline specifics of the forgery accusations. The “information” document that officers filed in court, however, charges that Ms. Picard and Canadian Fertility Consultants (CFC) knowingly made four false documents: profiles of two egg donors and two surrogate mothers, intending in each case that the false profile “be acted on as genuine.”

Frank Addario, Ms. Picard’s Toronto-based lawyer, said he and his client would not respond to details revealed in the police document.

“We won’t have any comment on that or the case,” he said by email. “We are going to defend it in court.’’

Sherry Levitan, a Toronto fertility lawyer, said prospective parents rely heavily on such depictions of surrogates and egg donors, who provide half their child’s genetic makeup. Most never meet the egg donor and would not necessarily be able to verify the accuracy of the profiles, she said.

“You can imagine that when intended parents are choosing an egg donor, the most important aspect is the egg donor’s health,” said Ms. Levitan. “It’s really quite disturbing to think that an intermediary would have changed it.”

She said she worked with a couple last year who were able to compare an egg donor’s original profile and the one they were shown by an agency, and saw clear differences.

In another case, said Ms Levitan, a couple learned from the clinic that was about to perform an egg retrieval that the donor’s health background had been significantly misrepresented in her agency profile.

“It was at the 11th hour,” the lawyer said. “It just wreaked havoc.”

Ms. Picard is also charged under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act with purchasing sperm or egg from a donor, paying a female to be a surrogate mother and accepting consideration for arranging the services of a surrogate mother — or offering to do so.

The law allows people who donate eggs or sperm or act as surrogates to be reimbursed for legitimate expenses, but not paid fees.

On the Friends of CFC web site where Ms. Picard is appealing for donations to help fight the case, she indicates in a March 19 posting that “things became much more real” as she had to have fingerprints and a photograph taken at the RCMP detachment.

“It was a very emotional experience,” she wrote.

She said she hoped her lawyers would soon “have more answers to the questions that have been plaguing me – ‘Why is this happening to me?’ ‘Why would someone say anything negative about me?’ ‘How did this happen?’ ”

In an earlier posting on a Facebook page, Ms. Picard indicated that she was confident she would be cleared of all charges, and force changes to the assisted-reproduction law itself. The consultant said she was planning to launch a constitutional challenge of legislation she called “abusive to those trying desperately to become parents.”

Some observers say the unproven accusation that she altered the profiles could cast a new light on the case. It would mean the alleged infractions are more than just a form of “civil disobedience” by someone who opposes the law, said Francoise Baylis, Canada Research Chair in bioethics at Dalhousie University.

“This, to me, takes it to a different level [if true],” she said. “This isn’t about reasonable or ethical or social disagreement. This is an [alleged] attempt to deceive.”

The allegations underline that it is “buyer beware” when fertility treatment becomes commercial, said Juliet Guichon, a bioethicist at the University of Calgary.

The information document also adds more detail about the surrogate mothers involved in the alleged offences, indicating that three of them were American.

A surrogacy agent facing 27 charges under a precedent-setting RCMP prosecution continues to forge ahead with her controversial work, offering cash incentives for recruiting new surrogate mothers, boasting that business has “boomed” and requesting consultant fees of more than $10,000 from people who use her services.

Among the charges levelled against Leia Picard last month are that she accepted payment for making surrogacy arrangements, barred under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

On a surrogacy Facebook page, Ms. Picard indicates that she is preparing a Constitutional challenge of that nine-year-old law.

“I am … confident that in time, and through the judicial process, I will be cleared of all charges and, more importantly, laws will be changed,” she posted on the Canadian Surrogacy page. “This is not about me, it’s about laws that are abusive to those trying desperately to become parents. The Charter challenge my lawyers will launch will be a game changer.”

Sean Zaboroski, a fertility lawyer who works with Ms. Picard, said neither the fees she charges, nor the offers she has made online in any way violate the law, though he called the rules confusing.

Cpl. Cathie Glenn, a spokeswoman for the force, said she could not comment on information disseminated by the firm since charges were laid.

Ms. Picard is to make her first court appearance on March 28, after she and her Canadian Fertility Consultants (CFC) were charged by the RCMP in February. The alleged offences include purchasing sperm or egg from a donor, paying a female to be a surrogate mother and accepting consideration for arranging the services of a surrogate mother — or offering to do so. She and the firm were also charged with four counts each of forgery under the Criminal Code.

The law allows people who donate eggs or sperm or act as surrogates to be reimbursed for legitimate expenses, but not paid fees.

Despite evidence that the ban is frequently violated on the edges of Canada’s thriving fertility industry, no one had ever been investigated by the RCMP or prosecuted before.

The charges, though, have not shut down CFC, Meredith Kimber, the firm’s B.C.-based employee, noted on the Canadian Surrogacy page recently. “Business has boomed.”

“They’re making it look like they’re doing you a favour, but they’re really just out for themselves,” charged the 49-year-old, from England’s West Midlands region. “I think it’s really, really just bleeding people.”

In a document Ms. Knight received from CFC outlining expenses under its “international program,” the company indicates it charges out-of-country customers an “agency retainer fee” of $9,500, plus $1,000 for managing fees paid to the surrogate.

Another document says the company will in return answer all questions of the intended parents, relay information on medical appointments for the surrogate and egg donor, arrange lawyers, find life insurance, provide support to the surrogate, mediate between parties and help prepare birth documents.

ScreengrabThe Canadian Fertility Consulting website as of March 17, 2013.

The Human Reproduction Act says no one can “accept consideration for arranging the services of a surrogate mother” or offer to do so.

The law bars payment to bring together the surrogate and intended parents, said Mr. Zaboroski. CFC charges only for the invaluable help it provides once the two have already come together, acting as an intermediary in what can occasionally be a rocky relationship, said the lawyer.

The fee is closer to $6,000 for Canadian parents, whose situations are less complex, he noted.

On another Facebook page, meanwhile, Ms. Picard recently advertised a “new promotion” to recruit surrogates, offering $250 and entry in a draw for an iPad to those who find a potential mother who is later linked up with intended parents.

“We need 24 referrals by March 31st in order to activate the draw,” she says.

Science moves forward quicker than legislators can make law

There is nothing in the legislation that bars such finder’s fees, said Mr. Zaboroski.

Once the would-be parents and their surrogate are brought together, the mother receives a “basic surrogate reimbursement” of $18,000 — “paid as ten monthly installments” — according to the CFC fee guideline. She also gets another $2,000 if she conceives multiples, $2,000 if a Caesarean section is needed, and compensation for lost wages up to about $3,000.

The document makes no mention of reimbursing expenses, but it is only meant to indicate the maximum someone might have to pay, said Mr. Zaboroski. The actual legal contract the parties sign outlines that any money paid to the surrogate is to cover her receiptable costs, said the lawyer.

Meanwhile, he said the legislation is not only “very ambiguous,” but out of step with a society that has become increasingly comfortable with the fertility business.

“The fundamental problem is that science moves forward quicker than legislators can make law,” said Mr. Zaboroski.

Frank Addario, Ms. Picard’s Toronto-based defence lawyer, said he could not comment about whether a constitutional assault on the legislation is in the works.

She decided to move 1,200 kilometres from her home in Connecticut to Michigan, one of the few U.S. states where a surrogate mother’s legal right to decide the child’s future trumps those of the parents, and find adoptive parents for the girl.

She made the move in April last year and the child was born June 25.

“I think I did what was right for her. I gave her a chance that no one else was prepared to give her,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “I am proud I stood up for what I believe was right.”

Ms. Kelley, already a mother of two daughters aged three and four, decided to become a surrogate parent in August 2011. She had had two miscarriages and said her motivation was to help other families who could not conceive.

She was put in touch with a couple and in October 2011 became pregnant, using frozen embryos the couple had stored after in vitro fertilization.

But in February 2012, when she was 21 weeks pregnant, an ultrasound scan showed the fetus had a cleft lip and palate, a cyst in the brain and a heart abnormality.

‘I gave her a chance that no one else was prepared to give her’

Doctors said while the baby would survive, there was only a 25% chance she would have a “normal life” and she would require several heart operations.

Ms. Kelley then received a letter from a doctor on behalf of the intended parents that read: “Given the ultrasound findings, [the parents] feel that the interventions required to manage [the baby’s medical problems] are overwhelming for an infant, and that it is a more humane option to consider pregnancy termination.”

At one point the couple met Ms. Kelley to discuss their options. “They were both visibly upset. The mother was crying,” she told CNN.

”They said they didn’t want to bring a baby into the world only for that child to suffer. They said I should try to be God-like and have mercy on the child and let her go. I told them that they had chosen me to carry and protect this child, and that was exactly what I was going to do. I told them it wasn’t their decision to play God.”

Ms. Kelley then received a letter from the couple’s lawyer saying, “You are obligated to terminate this pregnancy immediately. You have squandered precious time.”

The lawyer reminded her that she had signed a contract agreeing to “abortion in case of severe fetus abnormality.” CNN reported.

After failing to persuade her to have an abortion, the intended parents told Ms. Kelley, via lawyers, they would take the child, but would have her placed in foster care immediately.

“That was not something I was comfortable with,” she said. “I wanted to do surrogacy to bring a child into a loving, happy home, not to have her being placed in the care of the state and being forgotten in a foster home.”

Ms. Kelley also hired a lawyer and was told that if the baby was born in Connecticut than the couple would have all the legal rights.

The other option was move to a state that did not recognize surrogacy contracts so Ms. Kelley moved to Michigan where she is considered the baby’s legal mother.

The child, who can only be identified as Baby S, is now being cared for by a couple who have experience with disabled children.

She will require major heart surgery and other operations to repair her cleft palate, but Ms. Kelley is optimistic.

“There is a definite possibility that she could live until she is old,” she said. “There is a high death rate in the first year, but she is already nine months.”

Bethany is a tax-paying Ontario resident covered by the province’s medicare system, but when she gave birth last month — to a baby who automatically became a Canadian citizen — her local hospital issued a $1,400 bill. The reason? The mother was a surrogate carrying the infant for a couple from Italy.

As interprovincial and even international surrogacy becomes more commonplace in Canada, some hospitals have begun charging for the delivery of children destined for outside parents.

The practice raises intriguing questions about the identity of babies born to “third-party carriers” and the role of taxpayer-funded health care in surrogacy arrangements that often span continents.

“In any other situation, the child is covered [because the mother is covered],” said Michelle Flowerday, a Toronto fertility lawyer.

“These are my clients, so I don’t want to see them in a position where they’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars. But then again, when the child’s not going to live here, it’s taxpayers’ dollars. There are two sides of the story.”

The ramifications can be significant for birth mother and parents.

In one case, a Spanish couple took their premature twins home, but skipped out on the $58,000 hospital bill, leaving it to the surrogate to pay, said Sally Rhoads-Heinrich, a consultant and owner of Surrogacy in Canada Online.

“It’s pretty awful to carry babies for a couple and have a C-section and everything and have them just leave you with huge medical bills,” said Ms. Rhoads-Heinrch. “It has definitely destroyed some relationships.”

Nobody is prepared to pay so much

Ms. Flowerday said she had to negotiate with a hospital after it charged the foreign parents $700,000 to care for a baby carried by a Canadian mother.

The charge was eventually waived when the infant stayed long enough in Ontario to be considered a resident and eligible for medicare coverage, she said.

Although as a lawyer she would not condone the behaviour, she noted that other surrogates are simply not telling the hospital the nature of their arrangement.

The costs were less for the Italian parents of Bethany’s baby, but they were taken aback by the bill, nonetheless, said the 32-year-old birth mother, who asked that her last name be withheld.

“If he was born with something wrong, or too early, that would increase,” said the resident of Trenton, Ont. “Nobody is prepared to pay so much.”

It used to be that no Canadian hospital would charge for services provided in a surrogacy situation, said Ms. Rhoads-Heinrich. The fact that both pre-natal and post-natal care for Canadian surrogates is covered by medicare has actually made this country’s carriers more appealing to some foreign parents, at least in comparison with American carriers, whose medical costs must always be picked up by the intended parents, she said.

As surrogacy arrangements involving out-of-country and out-of-province couples have become more common, however, a few hospitals are now billing, said Ms. Rhoads-Heinrich.

At Quinte Health Care, which runs four hospitals in Belleville, Ont., and surrounding area, administrators developed a policy on the issue last summer after seeing increasing numbers of surrogate births, said Susan Rowe, a Quinte spokeswoman.

If the intended parents are from another province, their government plan will be billed $388 a day for basic post-natal care, she said. If the parents are from another country, the charge is $720 a day, a standard fee for foreign patients, said Ms. Rowe.

“We are a taxpayer-funded institution, and we have to make sure we maximize revenues,” she said.

The Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, Ont., will charge intended parents from outside the province unless the baby stays in Ontario for at least three months — the residency requirement to be covered under medicare, said spokesman Mark Karjaluoto.

If the delivery is straightforward and the baby healthy, the bill can be as little as a few hundred dollars, said Ms. Rhoads-Heinrich. But if the infant is born early, the woman has multiple babies or other complications occur, the charges quickly mount, she said.

Meanwhile, many facilities still absorb the costs in such situations, say lawyers and consultants, leading to what they called a legal grey area. “Sometimes there are massive bills and nothing happens,” said Nicole Kopping-Pavars, another Ontario fertility lawyer.

Still, she said she had a “frantic” call from a surrogate after another hospital handed her an invoice. The lawyer contacted the intended parents, who lived in Quebec, and asked them to take care of the bill.

In two other cases, parents from Quebec were also billed for services provided to babies born to surrogates in Ontario, said Ms. Kopping-Pavars.

More than two years before, at age 29, Emily had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. But just before she was to undergo a radical hysterectomy, she was told that she was pregnant. Faced with saving her own life or their unborn child’s, the young couple made the excruciating decision to go forward with her surgery. It meant losing the baby, and forfeiting any chance at having their own children.

Or so they thought.

“I can’t describe what that was like after finding out you have cancer, after finding out your chance of ever carrying a baby is gone,” Emily says, still stammering at times as she recounts that painful day in 2010.

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But now, more than two years later, she and Mike had come from their suburban Chicago home to the labor and delivery department of a downtown hospital to realize the dream they thought was lost – to become parents, though not the way they, or most people, would have imagined.

Just 34 years ago, Louise Brown, the first “test tube” baby, was born in Great Britain. The result? A veritable in-vitro baby boom.

People started pushing the envelope

It started with would-be mothers in their 20s and 30s. “Then people started pushing the envelope,” says Dr. Helen Kim, director of the in vitro fertilization program at the University of Chicago. “If you could help a menopausal woman in her 30s, could you help a menopausal woman in her 40s? And then it became, `Can you help a menopausal woman in her 50s?’

“And the answer is yes.”

Some older women were having their own babies. But more often, they were using egg donors to have their own children, or serving as surrogates or “gestational carriers.”

There was the 51-year-old grandmother in Brazil who gave birth to her twin grandchildren in 2007. There’ve been others, grandmothers in their 40s or 50s and even 60s.

Cindy Reutzel, Emily’s mom, had a vague recollection of those stories. So when doctors shared the good news that they had been able to keep Emily’s ovaries intact, Reutzel immediately made the offer.

“What if I carried your baby for you?” she asked.

Sitthixay Ditthavong / The Associated PressCindy Reutzel holds her granddaughter Elle Cynthia Jordan Sept. 5 in Naperville, Ill. Reutzel gave birth to her granddaughter Aug. 30, 2012 after acting as a surrogate for her own daughter Emily Jordan.

Emily and Mike didn’t take it too seriously at first. “We didn’t really think that was a realistic option,” says Emily, who works in hospital administration.

It turned out, though, that it wasn’t really that far-fetched after all, particularly for a young grandmother who’s in good health, like Reutzel.

After a process that included psychological evaluation and hormonal manipulation to prepare their bodies, Kim eventually implanted Reutzel’s uterus with an embryo created with an egg from Emily and Mike’s sperm.

It was no easy process, with a regimen of hormonal shots. Work schedules were interrupted and vacations postponed. But Reutzel was committed.

“The thought of Emily and Mike . not being able to have children and . share that piece of their lives with someone just broke my heart,” says Reutzel, who lives in Chicago and is executive director at medical foundation. “I want Emily to have that connection with another human being like I had with her.”

As her belly grew, people started asking about “her baby.” But she was quick to tell them the story. This was not her baby; she was Grandma.

Admittedly, she says, she worried about the physical toll pregnancy might take, though her body handled it better than she expected. She also wondered how well she’d bounce back from a Caesarean section. That’s how she had delivered Emily and her older brother, but that had been three decades ago.

Still, she reassured Emily and Mike throughout the pregnancy that the baby was fine, she was fine, everything would be fine.

Humor helped. Mike often teased his mother-in-law each time they’d take her to dinner or do something nice for her.

“Are we even yet?” he’d ask.

“Not yet,” she’d reply, laughing.

In truth, Mike and Emily knew there’d really be no way to repay this kind of gesture.

“This is a continuation of everything that she has done her entire life for me, which is to make sure that I have the best life possible,” Emily says.

Sitthixay Ditthavong / The Associated PressEmily Jordan feeds her six-day old daughter Elle Cynthia Jordan on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012 in Naperville, Ill. Emily, who works in hospital administration, didn't take her mother's offer to carry her baby too seriously at first.

All they could do, they said, was to promise to raise their baby as best they could. And that was enough for Reutzel.

“I know I gave a gift,” she says. “But I’m also getting so much in return.”

Last week, a few days after Emily’s 32nd birthday, daughter sat next to mother, holding hands in the delivery room.

And Elle Cynthia Jordan was born.

“She looks just like you! She looks just like you!” Emily shouted, running from the delivery room to introduce their newborn to Mike.

Reutzel is recovering well. She even says she’d consider doing it again.

“When I watch both of them hold that baby and look into her face, it’s like everything I could have imagined wanting for them – better than I could have imagined,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.